FCB raises questions over addition of WiPay, NPICTT to U-Turn system

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

A let­ter from First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) has raised ques­tions about the in­tro­duc­tion of two ad­di­tion­al en­ti­ties in­to the Gov­ern­ment’s U-Turn on­line pay­ment sys­tem just a day be­fore its planned launch, warn­ing that the re­vised arrange­ment could af­fect the cost of trans­ac­tions to cit­i­zens de­spite the bank al­ready hav­ing an e-com­merce agree­ment with the Min­istry of Trans­port.

The U-Turn sys­tem is a dig­i­tal plat­form con­nect­ing the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (be­fore the min­istries were split un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, TTPOST, and the Ju­di­cia­ry to man­age elec­tron­ic traf­fic tick­ets, de­mer­it points, and on­line fine pay­ments.

The con­cerns, out­lined in a Feb­ru­ary 25, 2026 let­ter ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, cen­tred on why the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPICTT) and Wi­Pay Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Wi­Pay) had been added to the pay­ment process, whether the ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment with the min­istry still ap­plied, and who would ul­ti­mate­ly bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fees, set­tle­ments and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

In the let­ter ad­dressed to Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Bev­er­ly Reid-Samuel, the bank said it had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­e­cut­ed an e-com­merce agree­ment with the min­istry—then op­er­at­ing as the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port—to fa­cil­i­tate on­line pay­ments for ser­vices in­clud­ing U-Turn.

How­ev­er, it said it had been in­formed by the key rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Wi­Pay on Feb­ru­ary 20 that the min­istry in­tend­ed to launch the U-Turn e-com­merce plat­form on Feb­ru­ary 26 us­ing a new arrange­ment in­volv­ing NPICTT as an in­ter­me­di­ary and Wi­Pay as its tech­nol­o­gy part­ner.

The bank sought ur­gent clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether its ex­ist­ing agree­ment with the min­istry re­mained valid or had been su­per­seded by the new struc­ture.

It al­so re­quest­ed a clear ex­pla­na­tion of the op­er­a­tional roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the min­istry, NPICTT, Wi­Pay and First Cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing which en­ti­ty would is­sue for­mal in­struc­tions to the bank, over­see set­tle­ment pro­ce­dures, man­age dis­putes and re­ver­sals, and as­sume li­a­bil­i­ty if prob­lems arose.

But one of the bank’s most sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns cen­tred on the po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions of in­tro­duc­ing ad­di­tion­al par­ties in­to the pay­ment chain.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of ad­di­tion­al stake­hold­ers (NPICTT and Wi­Pay) in­to the pay­ment val­ue chain would im­pact the over­all fee struc­ture and cost to cit­i­zens of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the let­ter stat­ed.

It asked the min­istry to iden­ti­fy the ap­proved fee struc­ture for on­line U-Turn trans­ac­tions, ex­plain how fees would be shared among First Cit­i­zens, NPICTT and Wi­Pay, spec­i­fy what mo­torists would ul­ti­mate­ly pay to use the plat­form, and in­di­cate whether the arrange­ment had re­ceived the nec­es­sary gov­ern­ment ap­provals.

The bank said that with­out clear di­rec­tion on the fee struc­ture it could not pro­ceed, not­ing that for­mal au­tho­ri­sa­tion was re­quired be­fore any charges could be ap­plied to gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions.

Be­yond the fi­nan­cial con­cerns, FCB al­so ques­tioned whether the gov­er­nance frame­work sup­port­ing the plat­form had been fi­nalised.

It rec­om­mend­ed that end-to-end trans­ac­tion process­es be doc­u­ment­ed and val­i­dat­ed be­fore the plat­form went live, in­clud­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion pro­ce­dures, re­port­ing re­quire­ments, dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms and rev­enue re­mit­tance pro­to­cols.

The bank al­so sought con­fir­ma­tion of who with­in the min­istry would ap­prove those op­er­a­tional process­es and whether NPICTT and Wi­Pay would be in­volved in that val­i­da­tion.

First Cit­i­zens warned that un­less the is­sues iden­ti­fied in its let­ter were ad­dressed, it would not be in a po­si­tion to sup­port the planned launch of the U-Turn e-com­merce plat­form.

Wi­Pay Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ald­wyn Wayne re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the com­pa­ny had been in­sert­ed in­to the U-Turn pay­ment sys­tem to process gov­ern­ment rev­enue or in­crease costs for mo­torists, say­ing its role is lim­it­ed to pro­vid­ing soft­ware that man­ages trans­ac­tion in­for­ma­tion be­fore and af­ter pay­ments are processed by First Cit­i­zens Bank.

Wayne said Wi­Pay owns the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty for Court­Pay, the Ju­di­cia­ry’s elec­tron­ic pay­ment plat­form, which has op­er­at­ed for about a decade and is li­censed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance. He said the same tech­nol­o­gy is now be­ing ex­pand­ed across oth­er gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

He dis­put­ed FCB’s sug­ges­tion that Wi­Pay had ap­proached the bank di­rect­ly about the new arrange­ment, say­ing the meet­ing be­tween the en­ti­ties was or­gan­ised by NPICTT. Launched in Au­gust 2025, NPICTT serves as the Gov­ern­ment’s cen­tral plat­form for the mod­erni­sa­tion of pay­ments, fi­nan­cial flows, and dig­i­tal ser­vice de­liv­ery across min­istries, agen­cies, and state en­ti­ties, the web­site says.

“When the Na­tion­al Pay­ment Com­pa­ny set up a meet­ing with FCB, where they brought Wi­Pay as the con­sul­tant to ex­plain this set­up, they were not aware,” Wayne said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that the bank ap­peared to have been un­aware of the pro­posed struc­ture.

He added that the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment for the U-Turn plat­form was be­tween the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion and NPICTT, not Wi­Pay.

“So, when the Na­tion­al Pay­ment Com­pa­ny reached out to the bank... the Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion had a con­tract signed in De­cem­ber with the Na­tion­al Pay­ment Com­pa­ny. Clive Clarke, the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er, would have signed an agree­ment with the Na­tion­al Pay­ment Com­pa­ny in De­cem­ber to put on­line pay­ments on the U-Turn sys­tem. This has noth­ing to do with Wi­Pay.”

He said NPICTT’s en­gage­ment with FCB came af­ter the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready de­ter­mined the im­ple­men­ta­tion mod­el.

Ad­dress­ing FCB’s con­cerns about pos­si­ble ad­di­tion­al fees, Wayne said mo­torists were not pay­ing high­er trans­ac­tion costs be­cause of Wi­Pay’s in­volve­ment.

“There was nev­er a dis­course about fees... At the time, they (FCB) didn’t even know what the fees would have been—which we didn’t bring any new fees. We ac­tu­al­ly said, ‘hey, the ex­ist­ing ac­count that you have, the ex­ist­ing pro­cess­ing that you have, we’re keep­ing every­thing the same. All we’re do­ing is, this is how the da­ta is go­ing to be rout­ed.’”

Wayne ac­knowl­edged that NPICTT op­er­ates with its own fee struc­ture but said those charges were sep­a­rate from the mer­chant ac­count used by U-Turn pay­ments.

“The U-Turn mer­chant ac­count fee that they have there from FCB is the same ex­act fee.”

“I don’t want to make it sound like, hey, NPICTT does not have a fee. That’s their fee, right? But I am say­ing, for the sake of what we’re talk­ing about, that let­ter there is the same ex­act ac­count with no ad­di­tion­al fees for the U-Turn sys­tem mer­chant that they’re talk­ing about.”

He al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that Wi­Pay re­ceives mon­ey col­lect­ed from mo­torists through the plat­form.

“That’s the mis­con­cep­tion that, you know, is out there. Like we have $100,000 of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. That’s just crazy just to think about it. For­get if it’s good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent; why would tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey go in­to a pri­vate bank ac­count? That’s like 101 jail. That’s ba­sic. It makes no sense, even to say it. We just get paid for a ser­vice from the gov­ern­ment.”

Wayne said the rea­son an ad­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy provider was re­quired was that banks process pay­ments but do not man­age gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tion records.

“What the bank does is man­age mon­ey, pay­ments, cred­it card pro­cess­ing, mon­ey go­ing to your ac­count. That’s what the bank could do.”

“The bank will al­ways touch the mon­ey. What Wi­Pay is bring­ing to the equa­tion for gov­ern­ment is the ac­count­abil­i­ty of the trans­ac­tion.”

He said Wi­Pay’s sys­tem ver­i­fies the amount owed by a mo­torist, re­ceives con­fir­ma­tion once pay­ment has been processed by the bank, and up­dates gov­ern­ment records to show that the out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ty has been cleared.

“The bank han­dles the pay­ment, Wi­Pay han­dles the in­for­ma­tion be­fore and af­ter the bank con­firms the pay­ment... Wi­Pay does not touch the ac­tu­al cred­it card or pay­ments, or re­ceive pay­ments.”

Wayne said Wi­Pay is paid by the Gov­ern­ment for soft­ware ser­vices through month­ly in­voic­ing arrange­ments with the rel­e­vant min­istry and that the com­pa­ny has since ful­ly op­er­a­tionalised the U-Turn plat­form.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our, NPICTT Chair­man Nigel Fulchan and First Cit­i­zens Bank for com­ment on the is­sues raised in the cor­re­spon­dence. How­ev­er, FCB de­clined to re­spond and ef­forts to reach Za­k­our and Fulchan were un­suc­cess­ful.